Jordan: Water Scarcity

Introduction

Why is water so important to us? Firstly, it is one of the fundamental requirements for human physical survival along with oxygen, food, shelter and sleep. It is one of the basic human rights guaranteed by the United Nations. According to the UN Human Rights Council, "the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as the right to life and human dignity".

For basic physical survival, a human requires something between 2 and 5 litres of water per day. If we add the water needed for cooking and washing, then a Bedouin tribe from the Middle East can make do on roughly 20-30 litres of water per day, while sedentary populations require an absolute minimum of 100 litres per person a day for safe hygiene and an adequate standard of living Domestic households in developed countries typically require about 250-350 litres a person in Europe and over 500 litres in North America.

But it is not only a basic factor in the maintenance of our lives and the life of every organic lifeform on the planet, it is also essential to every other aspect of human life from cooking and cleaning, to transport and energy, to climate and food production, to carbon sequestration (the oceans act as a vital carbon sink and hence are becoming more and more acidified), to our religious rituals (think of the Catholic Church's use of holy water or the ablutions required of Islam before prayer), to our physical landscape (our coastlines, lakes, rivers, glacial valleys, etc) and to our mental landscape (our art, poetry and literature is full of water images, e.g. Stauss's The Blue Danube, Smetana's The Moldau, etc).

The human body itself is composed mainly of water: about 75 to 80% of babies, to between 50 and 65% of adults, while our brains are composed of up to 85% water. The planet’s surface is made up of 71% water, but only 0.03% of this is available to us as fresh water. Of the 1.386 km3 of water on the Earth’s surface, 96.5% is made up of the oceans, another 1% is saline ground water, and only 2.5% is fresh water. Of that 2.5%, 68.7% is locked up in the polar ice caps, 30.1% is found in groundwater, and 1.2% is surface water.

Resources

Documentary Films

• A World Without Water Channel Four documentary 1hr 16min
• It Runs On Water 51min
• BBC Our World - India's Water Crisis 22min
• Every Drop Matters A documentary on water governance in Arab States: Stories of community-based solutions to water scarcity 16min (with subtitles)
• Villages On The Front Line - Jordan 3-part documentary
• Saving The River Jordan 16min

Web sites

There are many websites dedicated to water shortage issues. Here is a small sample:

• The Water Project
• Wikipedia: Water Politics in the Middle East
• The Jewish Virtual Library
• The Smithsonian
• The World Water Council
• Water Facts

Academic Articles

The following academic papers can be found by using academic search engines or databases like www.scholar.google.com, www.scopus.com or www.sciencedirect.com, etc.

• Abdulla, Fayez A., and A. W. Al-Shareef. "Roof rainwater harvesting systems for household water supply in Jordan." Desalination 243.1 (2009): 195-207.
• Al-Adamat, Rida, Abdullah Diabat, and Ghada Shatnawi. "Combining GIS with multicriteria decision making for siting water harvesting ponds in Northern Jordan." Journal of Arid Environments 74.11 (2010): 1471-1477.
• Alqadi, Khaled A., and Lalit Kumar. "Water issues in the Kingdom of Jordan: A brief review with reasons for declining quality." Journal of Food, Agriculture & Environment 9.3&4 (2011): 1019-1023.
• Assayed, Almoayied, et al. "On-site rainwater harvesting to achieve household water security among rural and peri-urban communities in Jordan." Resources, Conservation and Recycling 73 (2013): 72-77.
• Barham, Nasim. "Is Good Water Governance Possible in a Rentier State? The Case of Jordan." ANALYSIS (2012).
• Black, Emily. "Water and society in Jordan and Israel today: an introductory overview." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 368.1931 (2010): 5111-5116.
• Hadadin, Nidal, et al. "Water shortage in Jordan—Sustainable solutions." Desalination 250.1 (2010): 197-202.
• Hadadin, Nidal A., and Zeyad S. Tarawneh. "Environmental issues in Jordan, solutions and recommendations." American Journal of Environmental Sciences 3.1 (2007): 30.
• Kubursi, Atif, et al. "Water scarcity in Jordan: Economic instruments, issues and options." Economic Research Forum Working Paper Series. No. 599. 2011.
• Libiszewski, Stephan. Water disputes in the Jordan basin region and their role in the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich, 2009.
• Medina Jr, Miguel A. "Global water crisis and climate change." Journal of Hydrologic Engineering 15.3 (2010): 167-170.
• Mohsen, Mousa S. "Water strategies and potential of desalination in Jordan." Desalination 203.1 (2007): 27-46.
• Mourad, Khaldoon A., Ronny Berndtsson, and Karin Aggestam. "Can Integrated Water Resources Management Contribute to Sustainable Peace in the Middle East?." Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection 1.1 (2013): 1-8.
• Mourad, Khaldoon Abdalah, Hartmut Gaese, and Amer S. Jabarin. "Economic value of tree fruit production in Jordan Valley from a virtual water perspective." Water resources management 24.10 (2010): 2021-2034.
• Potter, Robert B., Khadija Darmame, and Stephen Nortcliff. "Issues of water supply and contemporary urban society: the case of Greater Amman, Jordan." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 368.1931 (2010): 5299-5313.
• Ray, P. A., P. H. Kirshen, and D. W. Watkins Jr. "Staged climate change adaptation planning for water supply in Amman, Jordan." Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 138.5 (2011): 403-411.
• Samuels, Rana, et al. "Climate change impacts on Jordan River flow: downscaling application from a regional climate model." Journal of Hydrometeorology 11.4 (2010): 860-879.
• Scott, Christopher A., et al. "Facing water scarcity in Jordan: reuse, demand reduction, energy, and transboundary approaches to assure future water supplies." Water International 28.2 (2003): 209-216.
• Sowers, Jeannie, Avner Vengosh, and Erika Weinthal. "Climate change, water resources, and the politics of adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa." Climatic Change 104.3-4 (2011): 599-627.
• Srinivasan, V., et al. "The nature and causes of the global water crisis: Syndromes from a meta‐analysis of coupled human‐water studies." Water Resources Research 48.10 (2012).
• Zeitoun, Mark, et al. "Water demand management in Yemen and Jordan: addressing power and interests." The Geographical Journal 178.1 (2012): 54-66.